


crawl space

by alluran



Series: fire and gold, lightning in a bottle [2]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Gen, Keith (Voltron)-centric, the other characters make minor appearances
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-16
Updated: 2016-08-16
Packaged: 2018-08-09 02:28:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 733
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7783258
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alluran/pseuds/alluran
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Thankfully, months or days or hours in the desert with old professors pursuing them through the cliff sides and dunes looks the same on everyone when Coran leads them to the showers with more pomp and circumstance than needed. Dust lines the pockets of his jeans just like it’s spilling over in all of the pockets of Hunk’s shorts. Lance complains about it getting everywhere and how it will take ‘literal years’ to wash all of it away.</p>
            </blockquote>





	crawl space

Dust hangs in the air.

In his clothes.

Between the pages of his books.

Weighs on his tongue until it’s curling low and deep into his lungs until he feel like he can’t stand up all the way.

His glove smears it over the table when he tries to clear a spot to eat. The grit is something awful, but he swallows past it - adamantly not thinking about government issue meals slapped together on lunch trays that had long since paled. He reminded himself of the jokes - that everything from the mystery meat to the fruits and vegetables were a sham would probably rot out their insides before graduation. Definitely doesn’t waste his time on the asinine commissary system he’d managed to keep filled enough for the stray bag of chips or soda.

He groans and scratches the back of his head, and the damn stuff catches in his fingernails when he tries to shake it out of his hair. The inside lining of his boots a constant shift of dust and sand crunched in the soles and woven between the bare threads of his socks any time he stood.

The old bandana nothing but a grimy scrap of paisley.

It’s not the first time he’s had to adjust to a new definition for _getting by_ and it won’t be his last - yet hunkers down and weathers out one day after the next. The stray thought of the wind and sand eroding him away until there was nothing else to take. The walls of the shack would fall in with the gust and the hours upon hours upon hours upon hours he spent mapping and studying and tracing and documenting taken away somewhere far out from the garrison.

He’s tired.

He'll probably just become the notorious dropout case that was sorted into some sort of ridiculous tall tale that would paint his superiors as the senior officers that Tried Their Best.

It’s written plain as day on Lance’s face when they crash through the front door. The sharp look of an outsider that can’t fathom or understand someone living in this amount squalor. Drifting from one dust mote to another in the small living area, he ignores it. It’s usually easy to ignore it. Hunk (he’d heard Lance squawk the big guy’s name enough) none-too-gently claps him on his shoulder and offers to get him a glass of water for that cough and when he turns back from a rusted spigot that had gone bone dry a day or two ago, looking at Keith with empty eyes. Well, that one’s new for him, but he shrugs it off and clears his throat.

It’s not all that difficult to get lost in the shuffle when Shiro’s waking up with a full glass of water just out of reach.

But never the look he sees passing over the faces of their small friend (Pidge?) with the glasses or Shiro’s. There’s a seed of alliance in their hatred for the hallowed halls of the Galaxy Garrison and a familiar tilt in the chin when the world’s taken the best parts of you, then takes more than you have to give, and maybe - if you’re lucky - you’ll still have a few pieces to put back together and keep going another day.

The first one’s always the hardest, but not undo-able.

Beyond the haze of confusion and pain and panic, anger lights his mentor’s eyes; it makes the long scar jutting across his nose harsher and the white hair hanging over his brow brings out the stony glint in his eye. Shiro spits the name of the craggy commanding officer like acid.

They are two looks he cannot hide from, can’t deny because there’s dust in everything, in him, and it marks him on a radar he never wanted to fly on anyways.

* * *

Thankfully, months or days or hours in the desert with old professors pursuing them through the cliff sides and dunes looks the same on everyone when Coran leads them to the showers with more pomp and circumstance than needed. Dust lines the pockets of his jeans just like it’s spilling over in all of the pockets of Hunk’s shorts. Lance complains about it getting everywhere and how it will take _‘literal years’_ to wash all of it away.

He’s just glad to be off the ground, out of that crawling space.

* * *

originally posted here: [tumblr](alluran.tumblr.com)


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